


love, again

by slightlyworriedhuman



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Drugs, Follows Jesse through S1 and S2, Season 2 spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, lmk if I need to add other tags, part 2 spoilers, slight implied jesse/french if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 04:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyworriedhuman/pseuds/slightlyworriedhuman
Summary: The angel is not the only one who has died more times than can be counted.Jesse's life, his many deaths, and the eventual end of it all.





	love, again

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags posted above. This follows Jesse's life pre-canon, through Season 1, and through Season 2 until he dies.

The angel is not the only one of them who has died more times than can be counted.

The first time Jesse dies, it’s when he walks into his mother’s room to ask if he can stay at a friend’s house tomorrow, and instead finds her in the empty bathtub, yellow-white foam on her lips, eyes glassy as they meet his. It’s a violent death, and a quiet one; his heart shattering as he falls against the tub, hand frantically grabbing for hers in the porcelain basin, his mouth silently forming her name. It’s an eternal minute before the scream finally passes his pale lips, an eternity of dying as he grips his mother’s corpse, hand limp in his, head lolled to the side and staring at him. He thinks when his sister finally sprints into the room, she dies too; a family of the passed and past, crowded into a room as one frantically babbles to the cops on the phone, the other two in a locked stare. The sight of her pale, dull eyes never leaves his mind. He can never bring himself to stare anyone in the eye again, too fearful that when he meets their gaze, he will see shining glass staring back at him again.

After that, the world is a haze, dull and thin. The surface of his life is a sheet of frayed satin that is ready to be ripped away, threatening to blow away with every exhale. His sister becomes dull and thin, too; not in person, but in her spirit. He comes home one day to the smell of pot in their living room, and sees his sister looking at him guiltily as she exhales a thin stream of smoke over a glass pipe. After a long moment that seems to last for years, he asks if it helps her not feel. She nods, slowly, as if awaiting his reaction; another long moment passes, and he asks if he can try. When his brain seems to float away, the cloth of his life seems to lift with him, enveloping him in a new calm that he hasn’t felt in ages, since his mother’s fingers ran through his hair in high fever, since he laid under a blanket with her falling asleep to the sound of her voice. He thinks that that afternoon with his sister is the second time he dies; this time, though, it’s calm and quiet, a peaceful death of the self. He thinks this is what his mother had been grasping for in vain.

He dies a thousand times like this before the angel comes.

The angel is a rock, pinning his life down at the corners; for once, he feels the urge to  _ live _ , not just survive. The world slowly becomes less dull, day by day. For the first time in forever, he breathes and smells the scent of growing grass among trees; he feels the texture of gravel beneath his thin-soled shoes; he hears the chatter of others as more than a monochromatic hum. For the first time in forever, he sees his world. He sees that Steve is brave, and trusting; for the first time in ages, he sees the beauty of childlike trust in his eyes when he stares at the angel with the belief of the devoted. He learns that Buck is sweet, and strong; the pain the boy obviously carries like weights is evident in the hunch of his shoulders, but Jesse learns to watch as he traces his fingers over the scars on the angel’s back, sees how for a moment, the weight is forgotten, replaced by a beautiful awe. He sees that French is distant and scared; when he sits at the ring of candles that night, he looks and sees fire reflecting off of the lens of French’s glasses, sees the dark brown of his eyes and hair in technicolor hues, and thinks idly to himself that the other boy is beautiful, a stormy ocean in comparison to the warm flame of the angel. 

BBA, though, she’s the one that seems to raise his corpse from the ground. She lives gentle and soft; she lives with the tenderness of someone who has survived the tough, a stone smoothed by eras of erosion by the stinging sands. When he sits beside her on her brother’s old bed, he watches her smile as she speaks of her fallen kin, sees an all too familiar blend of bittersweet remembrance and misplaced blame. Her hand falls on his at some point during their conversation, and he startles, looking at her; her eyes meet his, and they’re not the pale glass he fears, but a warm gaze; he sees life lived and not yet passed, and when he finally understands after an infinitesimal, infinite moment, that she isn’t about to die, he dies again. This time, it isn’t just a detached calm; it is the death of apathy, the death of a life not spent living. He dies, and his vision is gentle love.

For a brief moment in the cafeteria, he learns what it is to truly feel alive, in every sense of the word. The first screams begin, and before he knows it, he's on the floor, belly pressed against the cool marble as he trembles in fear. Everything is so clear, so vivid, for the first time in this life; he hears the muffled sobs of students throughout the cafeteria, sees the tears running down French's beautiful face and dripping onto the floor, feels the tremors in his hands that mirror Buck's,  _ feels _ the gaze of Steve as the realization clicks in all of their minds. They don't want to die here. He doesn't want to die again. He doesn't notice the moment they all decide to stand, but soon enough he's on his feet, staring at a boy he's recognized since middle school holding a gun. His hands move, and the others move with him; when they hiss in unison, he realizes with the thrill of fear and joy he's felt only when he almost fell from the roof of the abandoned house that this is  _ life. _ They are life, together; their movements are energy, twisting them and using them as much as they use it, vessels believing they are in control. The cafeteria falls away, and they move; he feels terror and ecstasy and, as his hands fall to his chest, a moment of pure unfiltered emotion shoots through him. This is life; this is love.

The shot rings out, and when the angel beyond the glass falls, he falls with her. 

The ambulance comes, and the angel is carted away with a whisper and a whoosh. He's sure that he was shot as well; what else is this pain in his chest, this death that is so agonizing it can be nothing but life? They run after their angel, but his legs falter beneath him as his life shatters inside. 

The angel is gone.

—

After the angel dies, he falls back into his own cycle of death. Pot isn't enough anymore; his thoughts won't dissolve into the smoke anymore, and he itches for more, for a different release. He knows Steve doesn't sell anymore, knows Steve wouldn't sell that shit to him anyways; French has long since quit his habit. He makes his way to a bigger city twenty minutes south, scours the alleyways until he finds a man that looks decently stable, and buys his first actual drugs. When he goes home with falsely prescribed ambien in his pocket, he tells himself it'll just be for the really bad nights. It's so, so easy to get hooked, though, and he falls into the trap the pills lay for him. On the pills, he floats higher than he ever had on pot; one quick swallow, and twenty minutes later, he's listening to music from a dead phone, giggling to himself until he finally falls into a dreamless sleep. They’re breadcrumbs, leading to a house of numbness he craves; like an obedient little bird, he eats them up until he has to go back and buy more, the fabric of his life fluttering in an uncertain wind.

He only realizes he's died again when Steve shows up late one night and finds him curled in a ball on his bed, screaming from a bad trip; his mother's eyes float before him, a gunshot echoing in the background, and he can't control the sobs that rip from his fragile throat, can't help the shudders that run through his body incessantly. Tears are in Steve's eyes as he shakes Jesse, then holds him, a hesitant hand unschooled in the ways of comfort rubbing his upper back as he talks to Jesse. Jesse all but collapses into Steve, craving the whispers of reassurance, the promise of something better. He doesn't know when the sobbing stops and the sleep begins, but he knows that in the morning, he wakes to Steve asleep at the head of his bed, snoring gently with his hand still resting on Jesse's shoulder. When Steve wakes up, he tells Jesse that the angel was confirmed to have died last night, that the funeral is set to be in a couple days. The pills disappear with Steve into the cold morning air; he discovers it the night before the funeral when he's desperate to escape the crippling pain he knows is coming.

When they leave in a blinding haze of confusion and urgency, the hope is tangible on his tongue; its presence absolutely terrifies him. He knows that the last time he felt so alive, it was a violent death; desperate and full of fear and pain and heartbreak, he sneaks from the church with a pocketful of stolen bills and finds a seedy man in a seedy town, buys a baggie of god-knows-what and checks to make sure it won’t give him a bad high like the ambien before heading back. The continuing adventure is a terrifying experience; it only grows worse when they hit a possum in the road, shattering the mirror and their dreams. He barely notices the tragedy; the pills from the man keep him above emotion, away from the pain. He's dead when he drops the heavy stone onto the whimpering creature laying in the road; he spends all too long staring at its corpse, at the glassy, beady eyes staring into the blank nothingness around it. When he finally moves, it's to look up at the sky, to wonder when the rock will finally fall on him for the last time, tear through his flimsy, threadbare life.

At Aunt Lily’s he covers the mirrors with fabric as she yells frantically for them to block Rachel’s spirit from inhabiting her house. For a moment, he pauses with a sheet in his hands, staring into a mirror at his bloodshot eyes, his dead expression. Is this what he will look like when he dies? A depressed, haunted haunting, forever staring from a mirror in the vain hopes to save the angel? Steve brushes past him, reminds him in a shout to cover the glass. His reflection disappears under the cloth, and he feel like he fell from the brink of some insurmountable knowledge. Later, they hold hands in a red-lit room; he feels energy passing through their hands, static shocks between fingertips. Buck is the first to stand, as if signalled before the television even comes on. They all slowly follow him to the living room, reading Rachel’s messages aloud as if in a trance. Jesse is scared, scared by the implication that he could someday be stuck communicating through this crude fashion like Rachel; however, his fear for himself melts into terror for BBA, the only woman who seems to bring the same warmth his mother had as a child into his life, when the full message finally passes through his lips.  _ Only safe for BBA to go. _ It feels like a death toll, and he wishes it was for him instead of her.

They stand on the side of the road, arguing about something, or perhaps just conversing— he can't tell anymore, too riddled with stress and fear to tell the difference anymore. Next to them, a car on the road backfires, and for a moment, he's back in the cafeteria, a gun going off between them as they move; terror lances through him, and he all but doubles over, trying not to vomit. Angie laughs, shrill and unrelenting. He hears terror in her giggles, but she still manages to finally calm herself, to move with the rest of the others. He tries desperately to regain his sense of balance, get his mind under control, but it's forever until he can finally move, can finally suck air into his lungs again and taste the air around him, acrid and heavy. He can tell Steve regrets the rude remark he yells as soon as he says it, but Jesse's too shaken to really care. When they finally are in the car again, he fumbles another pill from the bag and downs it dry; it's the only thing that keeps him from breaking down when Steve comes and asks him if he's okay. He nods his head and rests it on Steve's shoulder when offered; he dies on the arm of his friend. 

They finally reach the beach.

He watches his friends run into the surf, laughing and yelling, alight with the promise of freedom that the breaking waves seem to give. Sitting on the sand, he rests his head on his arms and smiles as they yell for him to join them, be with them. Buck runs, shrieking with laughter, from a dripping wet Steve; the sun reflects off of his curly hair as he swings for the shorter boy, still wrapped in a coat. It’s the first time Steve has laughed like that since the angel died. The thought sobers him, and he itches for another pill.

As the others set up their tents on the beach, he finds himself walking to the old man’s room. He lays on the bed, eyes staring at nothing; their dull sheen reminds Jesse of his mother’s, and he shivers as he sits on the chair beside the bed. BBA’s uncle doesn’t seem to notice his presence. The only sign that the man is still alive is the steady, faint rise and fall of his chest beneath the blankets. His eyes fall on the man’s bedside table, upon bottles and packets of medication, and a dull thrill, a blunt knife of adrenaline and fear and resignation, runs through him. For some reason, though, he can’t bring himself to just take the medicine and leave. He doesn’t know why he starts talking to the man; perhaps it’s that his eyes reminded him too much of his mother, or perhaps it’s that he needs to comfort himself. He tells the man about being with his mother; about the comfort of a blanket resting over his shoulders; about the warmth of sleepy bliss. That’s what death will be like, he says, gazing at the man’s fixed gaze; he says it more to himself than to the one who most likely can’t even hear him. He realizes that BBA and her cousin are there only after he’s finished speaking. Shame floods him, and he stands, sneaking a stack of medicinal packets from the bedside table and stuffing them in his pocket before he leaves, brushing past them. 

Later, on the balcony, BBA joins him as he stares at the ocean. He’s watching the sunset, drinking in the colours of the sky reflected on the calm sea. Somehow, he gets the feeling it will be the most beautiful view he sees for the rest of his life. The hues of the setting sun are not the technicolor he saw in French’s eyes, eons and days ago as they listened to the tale of the angel; they’re muted pastels against a fiery focus, something lesser against something more, like the five of them standing next to the angel once again. His mind is full of worried thoughts, spiraling through his head as he aches to take another hit. When BBA comes, she says quietly that they’ll have to do it early in the morning, before her cousin wakes, before the police come for a nonexistent crime, before, before, before. She pauses as she looks out at the sun, almost dipping into the ocean to be quenched for the night. She wants her last view to be a nice one, she says, and the quaver of tears in her sweet voice are enough to kill him again.

He goes to the beach, finds himself staring at the lilac sky as the sun completes its lengthy trek across the sky. The ocean before him glimmers dark, the smell of salt winding around him and into his head, clouding his thoughts with the longing for something yet unknown. He takes the packaged medicine, stolen from a dying man, out of his pocket and stares at it; for a moment, he thinks he should throw it to the sea, let the waves carry it away. Before he can move, the moment passes, and he stuffs it back in his pocket before turning back to the tents. The dull thrill runs through him again, anticipation coiling in the pit of his stomach around resigned dread like a snake curls around its eggs; some part of him knows that this is his garden, that he has sown himself into this path. He zips himself into his tent and pauses, considering for a moment calling to Steve, calling to French, seeing their faces one last time in hope. But the ache, so familiar whenever he thinks about them and the pain they’ve faced, runs through his body once again, and as if prodded by a hot poker, he sheds his jacket and shirt, fumbling open the packets of medicated patches with trembling hands. 

He lays on the unrolled sleeping bag minutes later, the taste of his sinfully purchased pills strong on his tongue; the man was right when he said Jesse would float. The panic is gone, and he swears he can see the sun fading once again, even though the shining light has long since been extinguished; he feels as though he’s rising above his body, above their collection of tents, lost bodies on an ocean shore. He recalls the cafeteria, as he moved with his friends, as they came together to bring life to an absence; for the first time, he looks at the scene without fear, can finally understand the magnitude of what they did that day. He feels the thrill of terror without fear as he recalls the scene, the pangs of it shooting through his ribs. The ecstasy he felt that day as he joined with the others in movements more powerful than they could understand shoots through him as he floats away, shocks of dizzying power running through his veins. He sees the awe in Steve’s face once again, sees the peace on Buck’s as he traces the runes of the angel, sees the surreally vivid colour of French’s eyes, sees the sweetness of BBA’s smile once more. He reaches out to her, tries to say something; all that comes out is unrecognizable words, words that bring a heart wrenching fear to her kind face. He doesn’t know why, is already drifting before he can ask. All he feels is that moment of emotion again, the moment that moved him so as his hands rested over his heart in the cafeteria, the moment that he felt the thrumming of life within his bones. He sees it in their faces, recognizes it in their angel’s eyes as he finally sees her for the first time since the funeral.

He feels  _ love. _

He hears a whoosh, and Jesse dies one final time.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @jesse-mills if you'd like to talk about the show. Hope you enjoyed.  
> Please leave a comment with thoughts! I plan to write another fic that will be a fix-it for Jesse's death (because I cannot let him stay dead) but I don't know if I'll post it. Let me know if you'd be interested in it :)


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